The Globe and Mail – is it a newspaper, or is it a safe injection site for addicts of BDS?
“For some Europeans, especially the French, Lance Armstrong is George Bush on a bike…”
Read the whole sorry mess at “Obama, Russia and Fact-Checking John Ibbitson’s Ass“.
Ibbitson’s just trying to keep up the Bush Derangement Syndrome infection on the left in order to provide some balance in the commons to the Obama Derangement Syndrome that has now infected and rendered infertile the right.
It’s a full time gig for Mark Collins correcting the Canadian MSM on military matters. Why don’t they just save face and employ him?
My in-laws consume the Globe and are in turn consumed with BDS and anti-Americanism to the hilt. The anger and hatred is really quite astounding, as is the inability to consider Canada’s merits without comparing it to the U.S.
vitruvius – I beg to differ. The Obama Derangement Syndrome infects and renders the LEFT, not the Right, infertile.
Symptoms of ODS include infantile adoration of The One, a refusal to not merely consider but even look for facts and to instead, insist on abstractions, such as ‘hope, change, love for all, understanding of each other, anger at the wealthy’ and so on. As I’m sure you can realize, none of these terms are capable of clear factual descriptions.
And that’s the point. The Left has retreated into a realm of pure fiction, of abstract terms, of emotional allegiance to vagueness, to some utopian future, to indifference to the current reality. Facts, data, pragmatic reality – are all flung out with disdain.
Current reality is meant to be ignored, actual cases of greed, lust, power – such as in Honduras, in Iran – these are meant to be gotten over as quickly as possible, by means of verbal manipulation, like a bad case of food poisoning. And we can always blame these unfortunate realities on someone else, for ‘our reality’ doesn’t include such factual actualities as evil, greed, lust for power.
All our focus is on this glorious utopian future – which we prefer to talk about in our isolation from hard, daily pragmatic reality.
Oh, by the way, today’s Rasmussen presidential index puts Obama at minus five. His lowest rating. The ODS, of course, will ignore this fact.
So Ibby thinks Fwench people are as mental as he is.
BDS misery loves company.
Glad to hear he has to go to Fwench cycling loser enclaves to find his like-minded freres .
Ding Dang Dong
Ding Dang Dong
And I thought the Globe’s Rick Salutin was over the top.
Note to self: Never buy a Globe.
that the big Owe.Hussien has taken some hits lately has been real amusing to me… I’m holding out for his apology for the west conducting the cold war and all that. Then it will all make sense.
Obama Derangement Syndrome? hahaha, next time I’m required to fill out some gov’t form letter I’ll be certain to check the box labeled “disability” ? and then I’ll have the key to the special parking stall.
It figures that Ibbitson would be an Obamanaut. I remember seeing him on TV have a complete mental breakdown once – it was quite astonishing. This was when the ADQ, a modestly right of center party, made major electoral gains in Quebec.
I used to think of him being somewhat lucid and self composed but that night he completely lost it and seemed to be on the verge of dissolving into tears. You would have thought his pet monkey had just died.
So let me try to get this straight, ET. Your conjecture is that BDS infects the left, and ODS infects the left. However, since B and O are relative opposites, it’s really *DS that infects the left. In other words, all derangement is on the left, there is no derangement on the right. Which is rather my point: when one side decides that all derangement is on the other side, said deciding side has itself become deranged. I’m afraid, ET, that you’ve proved my point.
Vitruvius: “Ibbitson’s just trying to keep up the Bush Derangement Syndrome infection on the left in order to provide some balance in the commons to the Obama Derangement Syndrome that has now infected and rendered infertile the right.”
ET: “vitruvius – I beg to differ. The Obama Derangement Syndrome infects and renders the LEFT, not the Right, infertile.”
It seems to me that Vitruvius is right. Signs of ODS are often to be found in the comments on SDA itself. And I’m afraid, ET, that your frequent remarks and analyses that are based on the “Obama-as-narcissist” theme are a reflection of what he’s saying.
Preemptive strike: saying this doesn’t make me an Obama-lover, a leftist, a socialist, a Democrat, a Liberal, a Chicago-community-organizer-sympathizer etc. etc.
Oh! Oh! Vit and ET are both coiled and ready to strike into one of their esoteric debates – the subject of which is known only to them. Let’s get ready for the big words.
That Jeff Simpson is either stupid or lazy.He wrote that Europe has kept their Kyoto commitments.BS.They BOUGHT carbon credits from themselves and exempted heavy industry from the mix.
BDS is the problem of blaming bad weather on Bush. Whether the weather was bad or not.
ODS is the problem of blaming Obama for the stuff Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats on Wall Street are responsible for.
O is bad. But he isn’t the antichrist. More like a typical Eurotrash elitist.
BDS is acute and chronic at the same time. OBS is mild and has at least a small basis in fact.
Whoa there Jason,if Bush is responsible for every bad thing that the Republicans did in someone elses opinion,then Obama gets the same treatment.As Harry Truman said when president,”the buck stops here”.
I cannot imagine a future whereby B.Hussien ever has occasion to state that “the buck stops here”
he doesn’t have it in him.
spike,
Partially. Bush is responsible for the executive branch of government only. He had no control over the house and senate (being separate and independent bodies.)
Bush is responsible for Cheney, Rummy, Powell, etc.
You can blame the Obamination for the stimulus bills because he worked directly with the house and senate but the likes of Pelosi (which he as fought with) and Frank are not Obama’s fault. That lies with the voters who keep re-electing idiots to both houses (and by both parties for that matter.)
“Non of the above” would win in a landslide with the highest voter turnout in history if it was allowed on the ballot – which is why the cretin politicians will never let it get there…
Spike 1: “Whoa there Jason,if Bush is responsible for every bad thing that the Republicans did in someone elses opinion,then Obama gets the same treatment.”
That sounds to me like a claim that the right is entitled to its own derangement syndrome.
As I said in a post a few days ago, the difference between conservatism and the ideologies on the left is that conservatism is based on reason, logic and an analysis of the full sweep of human history. The assertion that the right is entitled to be as crazy as the left isn’t a characteristic of conservatism.
MJ,
There are plenty of frothing lunatics on the right. They’re just a smaller percentage of the whole than the frothing lunatics on the left.
On the left it’s near universal.
Heard indirectly several years ago from a competitive cyclist that some elements of the anti-cancer drugs Lance Armstrong takes are on the banned substance list.
How can you tell him to get off them, since they keep his cancer in check?
ET/Vit
“Which is rather my point: when one side decides that all derangement is on the other side, said deciding side has itself become deranged.”
On the surface this statement seem correct, but it’s my opinion that the political climate has changed drastically from when I was younger. I am of the opinion that there was a time when Americans and Canadians could vote for the liberal party or the conservative party knowing that each side had the countries best interests in mind, keeping in spirit with the Constitutions. Today those traditional terms do not apply. I believe I may have been a liberal pre-Trudeau, but since then the political discussion has progressed to socialism vs. capitalism. This shift in the game has put traditional liberals and conservatives in the same camp; and, this is where the social split occurs. Old liberals are now called Small ‘c’ Conservatives and old conservatives are called Social Conservatives. They live under the same tent because the “left” has now become a self-loathing entity that is for the destruction of western society as we know it.
All of that being said, I think it’s fair to look at socialism and the left as “evil”, for lack of a better term.
I agree with Ronald Reagan, but the difference is the evil empire festers in our own countries. The people of the old USSR, like left-tarded Americans are not evil, they’re just delusional, or deranged.
set you free.
The French will find a way to try to screw Armstrong.
BCer – still smarting over the fact that you aren’t familiar with Information Theory? Why does that bother you so much?
MJ and Vitruvius, nope – I stand by my comments. The BDS ailment is a characteristic of the left, and is similar to ODS, in that both ailments involve the patient being unable and unwilling to deal with pragmatic reality.
MJ- my comments on Obama as a narcissist are hardly abstractions or ungrounded opinions. There is ample evidence, in his words, in his behaviour, of this neurosis. I suggest you google the terms. You’ll find that Krauthammer, among others, who is a psychiatrist, is one of the many, and I use that term with evidence, who define Obama as such.
The BDS symptom was a horrified recoiling from reality and saying that its existence was due to only one Evil, the Great Satan, Bush. This left the patient ‘struck dumb’, weeping in loathing and fear.
The ODS symptom is an equal recoiling from reality but this time, ignoring its existence and instead, focusing on a future utopia. This leaves the patient equally dumb, but soothed, honeyed, and crooning over a heavenly messiah-induced stuporific future.
These are both derangements of the Left. They are both similar in their rejection of actual reality and their focus on ungrounded abstractions. They can be called ‘oracular’ (now, there’s a big word, BCer), which means that its followers reject evidentiary proof and instead, focus only on emotional perception.
The right has, I’ll insist, fewer derangements because a characteristic of the conservative is a belief in pragmatism rather than fiction, rather than an abstract, rather than utopia. Pragmatism rests firmly on actual reality, and is focused on practical strategies to deal with the ‘now’. It is not embedded in any romantic notion of purity or ‘the ultimate fix’.
The piecemeal method of rational dealing with problems, working them through, on the local and direct level, rather than the ideological level – is a characteristic of conservativism.
The right, because it is pragmatic rather than ideological, also recognizes the existence of evil, of man-as-fallen, so to speak. Of man as susceptible to power, lust, greed, and etc. The left, however, living in its fictional world, instead considers that IF ONLY man would do such and such, THEN utopic perfection would exist.
The right has no such vision. It has no BDS, which focuses on An Evil Agent (such as poverty, childhood rearing) whose removal will produce a Perfect Adult. And it has no ODS, which focuses on a Particular Strategy (such as The Stimulus, such as universal day care) whose institution will produce a Perfect Adult.
Now, what are the neuroses of the right? As I said, they are few, because the right, the genuine right, is not ideological but pragmatic. Therefore, their focus isn’t on an ‘ism’, that, if only it were implemented, purity and perfection would emerge. The right knows that there is no such thing, and that all we can ask of ourselves is to work, within the basics of the Constitution (which acknowledged our failings as humans), which are freedom, equality and the reality of work.
Nice try, ET, but that’s bull. x-DS is syndromic derangement caused by x. You can’t simply wave you hands and try to define both x-DS and (not-x)-DS to be some particular Φ-DS in order to make your Φ-argument work. That’s cheating. And besides: pragmatism is an ism too.
Right, vitruvius, ODS derangement attributes causality to Obama. Just as BDS attributed causality to Bush. Completely similar.
I’m saying that the Left, afflicted with BDS, consider that the current state of affairs is caused by Bush. And only Bush.
I’m also saying that the Left, afflicted with ODS, considers that the perfect future can be caused by Obama. And only by Obama.
I do not agree with your attempt to say that people on the Right are as deranged as people on the Left, because, according to you, they are attempting to blame all current horrors on Obama. The right isn’t doing this; it is criticizing Obama and criticism is a rational act not a derangement.
The left didn’t criticize Bush; they emotionally blamed him without even thinking about it.
And to try to denigrate pragmatism by semantic twists (it’s an ‘ism’) is beneath your bright intelligence. It isn’t an ideology; it’s a process.
Vit, would you prefer Pragmatic maxim to establish who wins this debate, or are our ideals gonna have to carry the day.?
For those of us scoring from home.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatic_maxim
Sorry don’t mean to pile on.
Ok, ET, now you are starting to try to make it sound like I’m saying things that I didn’t say, and that, in fact, I don’t agree with, so I’ll go find another discussion somewhere else where that’s not happening. Have a nice day, everyone.
Bush, Obama. Chevy, Ford. Left, Right. Harper, Iggy. Different opinions, changing times, different mindsets, changing mindsets.
They all make the world go-round. I can live with that.
What I CANNOT live with is Media Orgs built on an agenda. Fear mongering, dumbing-down the news, govment dependency promotion, …..
Kate’s point of the post, I believe.
(Editors offices as safe injection sites – another post header !?)
They have new phobia’s, too.
FFFI phobia: yeah well, every Friday they announce more Failed Financial Institutions. Every friday I get this nervous twitch at the ATM to withdraw all my money. I know its just FFFI . I know the FDIC is keeping my money safe..it’s fine, ok?
VMS: Vacant Mall Syndrome where you keep driving to that mall by your house, forgetting that its closed. ((usually afflicts those over 40 who already suffer from traumatic stress over losing a substantial portion of their retirement investments. ))
AAE: these are people that are just Angry At Everything and probably could be treated in the same manner as those afflicted with BDS and ODS.
And all of this START business is so entirely irrelevant anyway. A non-story of epic proportions.
The nuke problem isn’t with US or Russian inventories. Neither of these countries is likely to pop off a warhead on a mad whim.
The problem is with countries like Iran and North Korea which will do whatever they want regardless.
I have deleted over a dozen comments on this thread as a warning. This is not a debating forum. Take it to private email.
And STAY ON TOPIC.
It’s not delusional to notice how Obama cannot deal with Russia.
If it wasn’t for the Cryptic Crossword and the Bridge column, I would have canceled the Globe years ago. Jeffrey Simpson is getting to be a real bore on AGW.